transitions and new identities
by Anrheithwyr
Summary: Alice Longbottom is the middle daughter of Neville and Hannah Longbottom. She has two sisters, the elder named Luna and the younger named Hannah. She has a whole family to support her. And that support might soon become necessary as Alice begins to realise that the identity she has allowed herself to live by may not be the right one for her. A trans* recognition tale for NextGen.


"_I have three daughters: Luna, Alice, and Hannah. My lovely daughters, my very life. Oh, yes, I love my daughters very, very much."_

…

If Mummy were here, she would understand, Alice thought to herself gloomily. If Mummy weren't on a trip in Germany right now, she would understand, and everything would be fine. But, instead of in the flat above the Leaky Cauldron, Alice Longbottom's mother was away on a trip and instead, her grandmother was staying until Mummy got back.

Alice's grandmother had set a dress out for her, resting on the bedspread, a pretty frock of lilac. Alice was sure it would pretty on her, and that it would float and people would compliment her if she put it on. Alice was aware she was very pretty, as girls went. She ought to have put the dress on, but she didn't, only staring.

Instead, she pulled out an old suit of her father's. It was much too big and much too heavy for her, but she pulled it out and put it on anyway, admiring herself in the mirror, twisting this way and that to make sure that she looked decent. She liked the suit, much more than she liked the dress.

Her grandmother would be angry, of course. She had spent money on the dress, a nice pretty dress for Alice to wear to the wedding, and instead, Alice came clomping down the stairs in her father's old suit and a pair of his nice suede shoes.

Granny sighed, looking down at her middle granddaughter standing on the bottom step, waiting for her grandmother to pass judgment on her. Alice knew her grandmother was upset by the way her eyes got very wide and the way her nose seemed to flare outwards, a bit like a horse.

"Where is the dress I bought you, Alice?" Granny asked her middle granddaughter, eyebrows raised, voice heavy with exasperation. Just last week, Alice had come home from school with her hair cut very short, almost like a boy's. Daddy swore it was just a phase, but Granny didn't seem so sure.

"It's upstairs, Granny." Alice said, jumping off the last step and taking her spot at the table next to her little sister Hannah. "I didn't want to wear it. I wanted to wear Daddy's suit. I like Daddy's suit. It's comfortable and nice. Please don't make me wear a dress, Granny, please."

"Alice," Granny said shortly, beginning to grow annoyed. "I bought you that dress for the wedding, remember? The dress is supposed to match your sister's, remember, Alice?" She pointed towards Alice's sisters, who were both wearing the same lilac dress, looking very feminine and sweet in their pretty outfits.

"But I don't want to wear the dress, Granny. I like Daddy's suit more than the dress. Oh, please, Granny, don't make me change again! That dress is so uncomfortable. It makes me feel weird when I put it on, like I'm not wearing the right clothes. Please don't make me wear the dress, Granny."

"Is it too small? Do you not like the colour? Alice, if there was something wrong with the dress, you should have told me two weeks ago when we were shopping. I could have bought something a size up or down or something in a different shade. Why don't you like the dress?"

"I told you, Granny, it makes me feel uncomfortable when I wear it. The dress isn't too big or too small. It's not ugly at all, Granny. I promise, I like the dress very much." Alice said, wishing her grandmother would just stop bugging her about it.

"Then what? Why won't you put it on if you like it so much? Your hair's already so short, and with that silly outfit on, people are going to start thinking I've only got two daughters instead of three. If you like the dress so much, then go put it on right now, before we're late."

"But, Granny," the ten year old whined, scowling into her cereal. "I don't want to wear the dress, I want to wear Daddy's suit. Please, Daddy, please tell Granny to let me wear the suit." She twisted in her seat to look at Daddy with an earnest gaze.

"If she wants to wear a suit, Mum, let her wear the suit. I don't see why it's even such a problem-I think Ally looks pretty enough, even without a dress." Neville smiled at his middle daughter encouragingly.

"But I bought these dresses so the girls would match during the wedding. And Alice looks like a little boy with that haircut already-are we going to let her start dressing like on as well?" Granny's voice had grown very cold.

"Fine, Mum." Neville said, giving up. "Fine, you're the woman here, I'm sure you know best of all. Alice, why don't you run upstairs and change really fast so we can go to the wedding on time? Come on, let's make you go look like the pretty young girl you truly are under that suit."

"But Daddy!" Alice said, looking frantically between her father and her grandmother, eyes going wide. "I just don't want to wear the dress. Please Daddy, I like your suit better, please let me wear it?" Realising it wasn't working, Alice switched tactics, growing stubborn. "I won't go. I won't go, not in in that dress, I don't want to wear it-I won't go."

"We are going to be late for that Corner girl's wedding if you don't listen to me right now and put that dress on. Neville, some help with your daughter here, please?" Granny asked, and Daddy came over with a sigh, lifting Alice from her chair and carrying the ten year old up the stairs. Alice shrieked and tried to slow her father's assent upstairs, but he only tucked her limbs and kept going.

"I don't want to!" she yelled as the suit was tugged off and the dress was forced over her head. "I don't like it!" she cried when her grandmother pinned her hair up and put a pair of Mary-Janes on Alice's feet with a grimace. "I hate you!" she sobbed as they sat her in the car, buckling Alice in so her dress didn't crinkle.

…

"What about these?" Mummy asked, holding up a pair of light pink skinny jeans, showing them to a bored looking Alice, who sat on the bench while her mother picked out clothes for her, oblivious to her daughter's tapping foot or impatient glances at the clock.

"I don't like pink, Mummy." The eleven year old reminded her mother with an exasperated tone in her voice. "I think pink is really girly, and I'm not girly at all, remember, Mummy? Luna is the one who likes pink, not me. I asked for something black or blue. Luna is the _girl_, not me."

Luna, who was fifteen and giggly. Luna, who wore pink scarves in her dirty blonde hair and spent all night talking to boys until Daddy came upstairs and told her to go to sleep. Luna, who was everything Mummy wanted in her daughters-everything that Alice was not.

"I know, sweetie." Mummy said kindly, showing her daughter another pair of pants, at which Alice shook her head once again. They were even pinker than the first pair. "I just thought that, now that you're eleven and in school, maybe you could get into these kinds of clothes. You'd look ever darling in in these."

"Mummy, I've already agreed with you and the Headmaster about wearing the girl's uniform for school-even though I hate that skirt and the whole thing just makes me feel weird and wrong-but I want to wear _comfortable _clothes on the weekends at school. Not cute clothes or girly clothes-I want to wear _my _clothes, the ones that make me feel good. Like these." Alice plucked at the sweatshirt she was wearing, a tattered blue Puddlemere's jumper that she'd pinched off one of her Weasley cousins, James Potter, who played for the team now and often handed out Puddlemere merchandise to friends and family alike.

"I know, sweetie, it's just I was hoping that maybe now, you'd start being and dressing more feminine. After all, you _are _a young girl and wearing jumpers and boy's jeans just is starting to get ridiculous. And that _hair_-your grandmother was right, it's becoming increasingly difficult to recall that you _are _a girl. I almost think we should have called you Alex or something."

"Mummy, I _like _these clothes," Alice said, getting up from the bench. "I like this hair, I like the boy's clothes and their shoes. Girl's clothes are just…_weird _and I never feel girly or comfortable when I'm wearing them. I'm sorry, Mummy. I'm not very much of a girl. I didn't mean to not be girly like Luna, I really didn't mean it."

"I know," Mummy said, sighing and setting the jeans back on the rack she'd pulled them off of. "I know, sweetie, I really do. It's just, I'm afraid that the kids at Hogwarts might tease you if you dress like a boy and wear the boy's uniform. I know you don't like the skirt, but I'm concerned about you, that's all." Mummy looked at Alice closely, eyes narrowed. "Do you really want to wear the boy's uniform instead of the girl's, Alice?"

"Yes, Mummy." Alice replied, growing earnest. "Yes, I really do. I…that skirt is just…it's not _me_. And…the dorm, Mummy. Do I really have to share a room with four other girls, Mummy?" She had begun gripping the edge of her jumper nervously, frowning.

"You already share a room with Luna and Hannah, dear. What's so bad about sharing a dorm with your classmates? I'm sure some of them might become your best friends." Mummy asked as Alice twisted the edges of her jumper.

"I don't know them. Hannah and Luna are my sisters. I'm comfortable around them. I'm not comfortable around strangers, especially not girl strangers. I don't want to be in a room with girl strangers and get undressed around them or wear a skirt around them."

"Alice, is something wrong with you?" Mummy asked, leaning closer to her daughter, a worried look on her face. "Is there something going on that I don't know about? You've been acting rather strange these past few months-is there something going on that I need to know? Do we need to talk, Alice?"

"No, Mummy." Alice said sharply, looking up at her mother with a look just short of terror. "No, nothing's wrong with me, Mummy. I promise. I'm fine, I swear." She looked away, cheeks having red, watching as two teenage boys walked past towards one of the changing rooms.

She wasn't sure why, but Alice suddenly felt the urge to run after them and ask what it was like being a boy. She hadn't ever really felt comfortable being a girl-what if being a boy was just easier than being a girl? What if she felt more comfortable being a boy?

What if, Alice thought wildly as the two boys disappeared into a changing room, what if she was _supposed _to be a boy, but when she was born, things had gone wrong and she had been born wrong? Alice was tempted to ask her mother, but the question felt awkward in her mouth, and she wasn't sure Mummy even knew the answer herself.

"Alice, what are you staring at?" Mummy asked, directing her daughter's attention back to the matter at hand. "You've been spacing out so much recently. Are you sure you aren't sick?" She stuck her hand on Alice's forehead, making the eleven year old cringe and twist away. "Is it the fact that school's coming up in a month? You don't need to worry, I'm sure you'll make tons of friends.

"I'm not worried about Hogwarts, Mummy!" Alice said harshly, more than she had intended, and she felt bad for yelling almost immediately, especially when her mother frowned, turning away. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"Let's just go home, okay, sweetie? We're both just a little tired, I'm sure. The Cauldron's been so busy lately and I know _I _haven't had enough sleep lately, for sure. It's fine, dear." Mummy said, taking Alice's hand in hers, leading her daughter towards the front doors of the store.

They hadn't even bought any clothes.

…

Alice was jealous of the boys, who walked around so freely in their pants, comfortable in the knowledge that they wouldn't be getting strange questions about their uniform choice. Over the past three years, Alice herself had only heard the same reiteration over and over.

"_So you're wearing pants?" "What do you have against the skirt? I think it's cute?" "What, are you some sort of queer?" "Are you anti-pants, or what?" "You realise you aren't a guy, right, Ally?" "Do you just not like the skirt, or is it something else?" "You are a girl, right?" "Ally, what's up with wearing the boy's uniform?"_

Alice usually waited until her roommates left to change, brushing out what hair she still had. (Her hair seemed to get shorter every year, as Alice chopped more and more off, wishing it wouldn't grow so fast.) She didn't like the weird looks they gave her when they saw her unshaved legs, or the smirks she sometimes received when she tugged on the slacks for her uniform.

No one understood how she felt-not even Alice, who sometimes thought and dreamt as a male, calling herself _him _and _he_. It scared Alice how comfortably her mind seemed to make that jump between genders, and the way it struggled to return back to the feminine pronouns.

None of the other students-boys or girls-seemed to quite have the problem Alice was, wearing pants instead of the skirt, sleeping in the Common Room instead of next to the girls who were still strangers to her, even after three years.

The Sorting Hat _swore _she belonged in Slytherin, the house of the crafty and clever and sneaky, but Alice didn't feel like she was anything. She felt confused and out of place, her entire carefully built world crumbling around her just because of a stupid uniform. Everyone seemed to make it out as a bigger deal than it should have been.

Even her older sister, Luna, was rather confused about the whole situation with Alice. She didn't pester the young Slytherin girl, though, because family wasn't supposed to question family. Her first year, Alice had often run all the to the Ravenclaw dorms, begging to be let in, tears streaming down her cheeks. She spent a large part of that year blubbering to her sister.

But not anymore. Alice was thirteen this year, and over the summer break, she had made some realisations about herself, with the help of their neighbour at the summer house they were staying at, a muggle boy named Scott. Scott had explained to her that it was possible to have been born female, but feel as though you should have been male. He should have known how it felt-up until last year, Scott had been known as Stephanie.

Scott explained to her that feeling this way was perfectly normal-Alice was no different from anyone else, mentally or physically; she had merely been born a girl when Alice ought to have been born a boy. Scott called it being 'transgender', explaining that there were, even for someone her age, surgeries that one could have to physically change-and change the way the chemicals in their body worked-to adjust for their true gender.

"Have you?" Alice asked him as they sat on his front step, eating popsicles and reading comics. "Have you had the surgery yet, I mean? Are you an actual boy now, like my dad, or are you still like me?"

"I've always been an actual boy, silly," the sixteen year old said, lightly pushing at Alice's shoulder with his own. "And if you feel that, way, then you've _also _always been an actual boy-you've just simply been an actual boy stuck in a false girl body. Don't let anyone ever tell you anything different, Alice."

"Could I change my name, like you? Could I have a boy's name, or is that only after I decide I'm definitely a boy and start telling people about it. Or…" Alice's head spun with all the questions she had brimming inside of her. Maybe it _would _be easier for Alice if she stopped being a _she _and started being a _he_. "I'm a boy," said the boy who had been born a girl, making up his mind as he got to his feet. "I'm a boy, and my new name is…" He couldn't think of a good name for himself.

"What about Dean?" Scott suggested, smiling proudly at the young teen before him. "You look like a Dean to me, honestly, but if you don't like it, you can have whatever name you want. In fact, if you want to keep Alice, that's also perfectly fine-you _are _your own person, after all, and you make the rules for yourself now."

""I'm Dean." The boy named Dean said fiercely, wanting to shout it out loud so the whole block could hear him. "I'm Dean!" he yelled loudly, feeling ridiculous in his yellow tank top and green shorts, hair just brushing his shoulders-but he also felt free.

But now, at Hogwarts, Dean still signed all his papers as 'Alice'. He still answered to his old girl's name and he hadn't even told anyone yet-not even his own parents-about the fact that Alice had been a ruse, and that he had thrown that fake name-that fake identity-away. He was Dean, to himself at least, but the world still saw him as the weird Longbottom girl.

He felt like maybe he ought to tell someone. Scott knew the truth and Dean knew the truth, but no one else did; maybe things would get easier when he started talking about who he truly was. It had certainly felt freeing when he was yelling his new name on Scott's doorstep, feeling like he was taking his first steps towards a new life. This was the sort of thing that someone else ought to know.

The only problem was figuring out who to tell. This didn't feel like the sort of thing you wrote home to your parents about, announcing what-to them at least-must seem like such a sudden change in gender. And he wasn't very close with the other students in his dorm, especially not the girls, who thought that he was weird.

It Dean just then, the perfect person to talk to about how he felt and about who he was. His sister, who hadn't asked questions, even though it was obvious she wanted to. Luna would listen to him without interrupting and she might even have some advice for him. After all, Luna was seventeen and smart. Dean got up from his seat on the couch, deciding to stop by the Ravenclaw dorms in search of his older sister.

Sometimes, it was just downright terrible being stuck in his own head. As he walked out of the Slytherin common room and up from the dungeons, Dean could only worry. What if Luna laughed or said he was only confused? What if she got angry and decided she no longer wanted to be Dean's sister? What if she sent a letter off to their parents, telling them the truth about their middle-born child?

Dean shook his head, trying to rid himself of the awful thoughts in his head. Of course his sister would still love him, why wouldn't she? Luna hadn't judged Dean for the short hair or the boy's uniform; why would she judge him just because he had finally realised his true gender? The two siblings-why nearly four years apart and of totally different mindsets-were close, or at least closer than most.

But what if she rejected him? Dean worried to himself, climbing the staircases as it began to move. What if she says she hates me and that she can never be my sister again? What if…what if this was all a mistake? Dean paused on the staircase, unsure of what to do. He didn't want to lose him family, but it was getting painful trying to hiding the truth from everyone.

Dean had realised the truth about himself and who he was really was, and he had expected this newfound truth would make his life easier. Instead, all it seemed to have done was complicate his entire existence and how he interacted with those around him. Of course, it was so much easier now, being a boy.

He just wished he didn't have to hide that fact from everyone he knew. One day, though, Dean decided, things would be different. One day, things would be better, for him, for people like Scott and Dean. Things would get better-they _had _to. His parents, his siblings, and his whole family-they would still love him, no matter what. They _had _to, that's what being a family was. He almost couldn't wait for the day that he could finally tell the truth.

Dean just wished that day would come sooner.

…

"_I have two daughters and a son: Luna, Dean, and Hannah. My lovely children, my very life. Oh, yes, I love my children very, very much."_

…

_**Written to honour Cece, who has taught me everything I know about the complications of a trans* life. Also, much thanks given to Jane for helping me with this, and the friends I've made in the NextGen Discussion Topic. **_


End file.
